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While the principle revelatory text in Islamic tradition is the Qur'an , the entire life of the prophet Muhammad is regarded in Islamic tradition as a source of revelation and truth. Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad, like other prophets, had a purified soul and so led a perfectly exemplary life. Not only should Muslims follow the truth revealed to Muhammad, they should also turn to his actions and his own sayings (as opposed to his recitation of God's speech). The "example of the prophet," contained in both actions and speech, is known as the Sunnah and has an authority in Islam nearly equivalent to that of the Qur'an . The Sunnah is the second major source of Islamic sacred law, or Shari'ah, with the first being the Qur'an itself. In both the formulation of the Shari'ah and in Islamic tradition in general, it is the sayings of Muhammad, or hadith, that are especially important. These were orally transmitted during the lifetime of the prophet and for several generations afterwards; they were finally collected in the eighth century into a group of six canonical books called "The Six Books." The sayings collected in these books constitute the authentic sayings of the prophet and have a high religious and social authority in Islamic tradition. There are, however, other sayings collected in other books that various Islamic traditions hold to be as authentic as The Six Books, but there is no universal agreement throughout Islam on their authenticity. Shi'ite Muslims, however, have a separate collection of sayings and do not recognize the authenticity of all the sayings collected in The Six Books.
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